Welp. Here comes fire season.
Welp. Here comes fire season. JESSICA STEIN

Take the recent drop in King County homelessness with a giant grain of salt: According to One Night Count, the county’s annual visual count of every homeless person, chronic homelessness dropped by 38 percent since last year, but that massive decrease is pretty hard to square with what people see on the ground. Demand has not eased at Seattle’s growing—but still insufficient—number of homeless shelters, and large encampments are still a regular occurrence across the city. According to Sydney Brownstone at the Seattle Times, the methodology of the count may be a more likely cause of this steep drop, because no matter how well volunteers canvas the county, they are still likely to undercount the number of people struggling with homelessness.

Wildfire grows to more than 3,000 acres overnight: It grew tenfold in a matter of hours due to high winds and dry conditions in Grant County near Beverly. No houses were burned, but many families evacuated their homes overnight as a precaution. As of 6 a.m. Tuesday, the fire was 0 percent contained and crews were still getting a handle on the size of the fire to properly fight it. I think you're going to hear some version of this story a lot this summer.


Polluted slough in Everett is getting a face-lift: Three manufacturing companies settled a suit brought by Washington State and the Suquamish and Tulalip Tribes for pollution and environmental hazards left behind at the mouth of the Snohomish River in Everett. They’ll have to pay close to $4 million to clean up the site and the US Navy is chipping in an extra $800,000. And not a moment too soon, salmon could really use a nice swampy slough to start their journey up the river.

Fight over Eastside power lines intensifies: Puget Sound Energy has a tenacious adversary on its hands that's well-organized and well-funded. The Energize Eastside project has been in the permitting process for six years now, largely because of a resident-led opposition campaign that has tripped it up at every turn. The rapidly growing Eastside is in need of expansion to its electricity infrastructure, but how to do so is where they get stuck. PSE is planning a 16-mile power line from Renton to just north of Redmond, but residents are worried about the project’s safety given the gas lines that follow a very similar path. The permit may all hinge on a forthcoming ruling from Bellevue’s hearing examiner, so stay tuned!

I found my next pitch:


James Holzhauer’s Jeopardy! streak comes to an end: Lauded as the man who broke Jeopardy!, Holzhauer won 33 straight games and was just one win away from breaking the all-time earning record for a non-tournament contestant. That hasn’t been broken since 2004. But don’t feel too bad for him, he still won more than $2 million over the last month or so. Not too shabby. Also, Ken Jennings can keep his title as winningest Jeopardy! contestant.

Purdue Pharma is now being sued by 45 states: And the District of Columbia! That's got to be some kind of record. All we need is five more lawsuits to make it a nifty fifty. Purdue is the drug manufacturer that makes Oxycontin, the opioid painkiller that partially kick-started the opioid epidemic. California is one of the most recent states to sue the drug company, a significant move for the country's most populous state. Purdue is accused of aggressively pushing its drugs on doctors and patients despite knowing how addictive they were. Internal memos from the company show a strategy to put the blame on people who became addicted and take the pressure off themselves. I don't think it worked.

London isn't thrilled about Trump being across the pond: And they're not being polite about it! Some shots from London's protests, where thousands of people have turned out:




US way behind other developed countries on earthquake-proof buildings: In earthquake-prone countries like Japan, many new buildings include a technology called base isolation that essentially marries steel and rubber to insulate the effects of the earthquake on the foundation from the rest of the building. It’s hard to describe but check out the New York Times’s fun little animations on how this actually works. Most American buildings are designed to “crumple like a car in a head-on collision,” because they spread out the energy and ideally prevent it from collapsing, but base isolation is a whole helluva lot better. It’s also expensive, but, hey, might as well guarantee your building doesn’t fall down and kill people. That would be expensive too.

Thousands gather in Hong Kong on the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square: Tiananmen Square was a government-led massacre of student protesters in mainland China that killed anywhere from a few hundred people to 2,600. Estimates are fuzzy because China’s communist government is fiercely secretive about the incident and still publicly denies it ever happened. Hong Kong residents are only able to hold memorials like this one because they live in a special administrative region and have more autonomy.


Soak up the sun, people: Because the rain will start bearing down on us. Lord knows we need it.


Bumbershoot finally announced its lineup: Took you fucking long enough! There is still no word on what the mysterious B they tweeted weeks ago was (I’m still hoping my girl Cardi makes a showing). The lineup does include a redacted artist near the top, so it could happen!


Now listen here, you $#!%: So some readers may have noticed there was no music blurb yesterday. Maybe it’s because I had a gut feeling that Bumbershoot would release its lineup later that day and that would be the theme of the week. Or maybe I just forgot. I’ll let you decide. The lineup is lukewarm at best, but there are some bright spots in there, so I’ll highlight my favorites this week starting with Tyler, the Creator’s new album Igor.

Send me your mugs! Come on, people, I need mugs to survive. You know how Voldemort had to drink unicorn blood back in the day? That's how I need pictures of mugs on Wednesdays—so send them my way at tkenney@thestranger.com!

Tonight's best Seattle entertainment options include: A night of Australian rock with the Babe Rainbow, West Side Story, and a chance to see Eyes of the Totem, a 1926 silent film shot in Tacoma.